Even as Raeburn's finger tightened on the trigger, the Phurba was lifting to point directly at him, tracing a darting symbol in the air. The fusillade that Raeburn loosed went wide, as if deflected by an invisible wall, the ricochets clattering about the confines of the control room and sending Raeburn himself cringing for cover. As the echoes died away, Nagpo turned his dark gaze around the room, the Phurba still held between himself and his adversary, and noted the body of Kurkar lying face-down in a congealing pool of blood. The barely checked anger contorting his face as he turned back to Raeburn made him look almost like the German corpses sprawled about the room.
"This was ill done, Gyatso," he rasped. "Whatever satisfaction it may have given you, I do not think you will find it worth the price."
As he took a step forward, Raeburn again lifted the Walther and pulled the trigger at point-blank range, only to have it click on an empty magazine.
"You fool!" Nagpo said witheringly. "What did you think to accomplish by betraying us?"
"You would have betrayed me!" Raeburn blurted, retreating as far as he could against a bulkhead. "Do you think I ever believed Dorje would let me walk away from this?"
Nagpo's gaze glinted. "It seems that Rlnpoche may have underestimated you after all," he said. "It is true that he always intended to dispense with you, once you had served your purpose. But you are wrong to regard it as a betrayal. On the contrary, justice will be served. Whatever your excuses, your failure in Scotland could not be allowed to go unpunished. Now, kindly drop your weapon."
Instead, Raeburn hurled the empty gun at Nagpo's face. The Walther bounced aside harmlessly, deflected by the magic of the dagger, but its flight bought Raeburn the split-second of distraction he was hoping for. Thrusting his hand into the front of his coat, he pulled out the wand of ashwood and snarled a word of cold command as he levelled it at Nagpo.
The monk flinched, but only slightly, the Phurba already moving to counter the attack. As a burning shock numbed Raeburn's right hand, the wand itself ignited in a burst of green flame.
With an involuntary cry, he cast it from him. The wand vaporized in midair, its ashes sifting to the floor in a scattering of grey powder. Now within reach, Nagpo touched the tip of the Phurba to Raeburn's breast. Pain radiated outward from the point of contact in a wave of cold that strangled his breath in his throat and paralyzed all voluntary movement. The next thing Raeburn knew, he was flat on his back on the floor, helpless to move or speak, as Nagpo came to stand over him, now gazing down impassively.
"Did you really suppose you could succeed in your betrayal?" he said coldly. "Rinpoche had intended that your death should be quick and painless, for the sake of the boyhood you shared. Now I think he will prefer it slow and lingering, and that he will wish the pleasure of feasting on your agonies."
Aboard the Lady Gregory, the distant crack of what sounded like a single gunshot penetrated through the low thrum of the submarine's idling diesels. As the echoes of the report faded out across the water, the diesels abruptly stuttered and died, leaving behind an almost uncanny silence.
"Good Lord, what was that?" Peregrine murmured, as McLeod muttered, "Gunshot," and Adam swung his binoculars back to the conning tower. The one undead-crewman on deck had collapsed over the box he had just brought down from the conning tower, and an orange-clad figure was disappearing down the hatch.
"A possible mutiny below decks, I do believe," Adam murmured, as more shots reverberated from within the bowels of the submarine. "Listen."
"I make that thirteen shots," McLeod whispered, as the firing ceased. "Somebody's played their trump card."
Aoife was also raking the superstructure of the sub with her binoculars. "I don't see any other signs of movement," she reported. "Maybe our friends have - "
Before she could complete her speculation, the Lady Gregory's engines roared to life.
"That's it!" came Magnus' joyful yell from the open engine compartment, as Eamonn burst forth and scrambled back toward the pilothouse. "Let's get this tub moving!"
As Magnus, too, emerged, his tight smile matched those on the faces of his fellow Huntsmen, boding no quarter for their adversaries as the Lady Gregory began to move out. Delving into a stern locker, Magnus produced a pair of Ingram submachine guns and tossed one to McLeod. Adam handed his binoculars to Peregrine and withdrew Tseten' s mala from his pocket, quietly wrapping it many times around his left wrist. At last they were to be allowed to engage the enemy.
The distance between the two vessels began to close. Magnus quietly joined Eamonn in the pilothouse, to give himself a higher vantage point. Off beyond the submarine, the seaplane still rode the swells like a delicate sea bird, its rubber raft drawn up under the wing. Peregrine's view of it was partially blocked by the hulk of the conning tower, but it appeared that a man inside was helping the man in the boat lift one of the crates up into the plane's cargo hatch.
"They've got that first crate aboard the plane," he announced.
Instead of answering, Adam turned to Aoife. "Do you know if Eamonn has such a thing as a loud-hailer on board?''
"I'll get it," she said.
When she put it in his hands, a few seconds later, Adam raised it to his mouth. They had closed their range to fifty yards, and Eamonn held the Lady G at that distance.
"Ahoy there, U-636!" he called, his deep voice reverberating across the water. "Anyone who can hear me, come out and show yourselves. You stand accountable for breaches of the peace on this and other levels. As acting head of this enforcement team, I require you to divest yourselves of any and all weapons, and to surrender yourselves into our custody. Otherwise, we will board you and take you by force."
Silence answered, broken only by the idle of the Lady G's engines and the lapping of the waves. Then all at once, the shaven head and orange-clad shoulders of a man with Oriental features emerged above the edge of the conning tower, silken robes fluttering about him like tongues of fire in the moonlight.
Adam was already drawing his skean dubh from an inside pocket, handing off the loud-hailer to Aoife so he could unsheathe the little blade, quietly pocketing the sheath as a new voice made itself heard across the gap between the two vessels, accented and precise.
"Whoever you may be, do not think to intimidate me with threats of force," the man said, though strain showed in both face, and tone. "I have power at my command that the likes of you can scarcely comprehend."
No simple pointing of the Phurba would suffice to still the Lady Gregory this time. The light of the moon caught the dull sheen of the metal blade as its owner began to roll the hilt between his hands, the gutteral words of a deep-toned chant rolling from his lips like the rattle of dead men's bones. The sound woke dissonant echoes off the surrounding waters, joining the chant like a supporting cacophony of demon voices, till the air itself grated on the eardrums like scrabbling fingernails dragged across a slate.
"Get back!" Adam warned, lifting his skean dubh to the sky in appeal to the Light as McLeod, Peregrine, and Aoife faded back from him, hands clapped to their ears - for sound was building like a rising wave, voice and echoes racing up and down the scale in screeching counterpoint. The Lady Gregory's engines sputtered and failed again.
Undaunted, Adam repeated his entreaty. The blue stone set in the skean dubh's pommel seemed to draw the moonlight like a magnet, wreathing his hand in a shimmering aureole of moonbeams as he executed a sign before him in the air with his blade. As he completed the gesture, Peregrine heard - or thought he heard - an elusive chime, like the faraway peal of temple bells. But that delicate, ethereal sound was swallowed almost instantly in an earsplitting crack of thunder.